Prioritize
the accessibility of doctors. In Cuba, there is one doctor per 1,075
citizens. The Philippines’ doctors, by contrast, serve 33,000 patients per
doctor. This is why the goal of the DOH is to raise 35,000 doctors more, in
order to serve between 2,000 to 5,000 patients. [Statistics
Source]

Prioritize
healthcare as a government expense. The Health Secretary noted that Cuba allocated 28% of their national
budget to healthcare, translating to $460 per capita. On the other hand, the
Philippines spends only $76 per capita. [Statistics
Source]

§The Philippines has 1 in 5 or 20% of the whole
population suffering from mental health issues. In a population of 100 million,
this translates to 20 million mentally ill patients.

§The Philippines has only 700 doctors serving the
20 million population of mentally ill patients.

Aside from these dire priorities of the health care system in the
Philippines, there is another issue that begs to be addressed: That of the
urgent need for an electronic medical record system to be rolled out across
hospitals and clinics.

Retired pediatrician Dr. Leonardo Leonidas wrote of a story about how a
nurse from Maine, USA visited his pediatrician’s office in 1994. The nurse rated
his office at 92.3%, no doubt, a higher rating against the 89.5% average of the
rest of the pediatricians in Maine.

Given these priorities for the government, a couple of questions beg to be asked: Where does the government integrate the
need to keep accurate records of patient care? When does the government aim to ensure
that there is data being gathered, in order to determine the next steps in
patient and health care improvement?

These are burning questions that need to be addressed. Meanwhile, since
the Philippines has a very strong private healthcare sector, one big way that
doctors can contribute to nation-building is to ensure that their own patients’
medical records are accurately kept. This way, epidemiological data from the
private healthcare sector will be able to contribute to the country’s larger
body of healthcare data. And this pooled data, from private and government
sectors alike, shall accurately guide and shape ongoing and future healthcare
policies.